Best of the Best (1989)

Everyone knows that training montages are pivotal to an action movie, right? But what happens when a film forgets the 'montage' part and just gives us the training? That's what happens in Best of the Best, which barely leaves the film enough time to do the actual fighting at the end.The films opens with James Earl Jones of all people doing trials to cobble together a team of five Tae Kwon Do champs to go head to head with some Korean guys. He finally picks Eric Roberts (who has a 'five' year old son to look after), bumhole Chris Penn, Tommy (who has beef with the one eyed Korean champ), a Buddhist called Orville and an Italian-American guy who you know will be first up to have his arse kicked.After bonding with each other during a bar fight, our lads set off for some training under the watch of hard arse James Earl Jones, who shouts a lot at everyone. No one likes Chris Penn either, and to add to the drama Tommy's having flashbacks to his brother being killed and Eric's kid ends up in a coma! This lot need to neck some Beta Blockers and get to that tournament fast! Couch Earl Jones won't even let Eric have some emergency leave to go see his five year old teenage kid and therefore Eric quits the team and goes to see his son and no doubt buy more timotei for that hairdo of his, while Tommy quits as well. It's all drama, no kick boxing. C'mon! Get it together.Finally, and I mean with about ten minutes of the film to go, we finally get our kick boxing tournament. I'm all up for grown men round-housing each other in the face but this film is too well acted and too well made to be stupid enough for me to enjoy fully. Both Julia Roberts and Jones James Earl are fine actors, but couldn't they have taken a leaf out of a Gary Daniels or Godfrey Ho film and thrown in some side story involving drug runners or at least an exploding car or too? I paid thirty pence for all four of the Best of the Best films, so I can't complain much. I'm halfway through watching the second one and it's much better.

It is very rare and exceptional to have martial arts drama on big screen, or fighting drama films, well we had "Rocky" series, but this movie is not about boxing, it's about Karate and Taekwondo. The movie follows five best US contestants in full contact world karate/taekwondo championship against Korea. Trained by one of the best coaches in the US, the two leading characters are facing their own demons through training, now that was for the sense of drama… The film holds pretty interesting acting cast, starting with James Earl Jones, who plays coach Frank Couzo. Don't know how Jones ended up in martial arts film, but, I think he loved the character. Well, later he filmed another martial arts action film "Excessive Force" (1993), so he is fine by it, and he did his acting well as always. Now, we get to our two leading men… Eric Roberts, who plays a veteran fighter Alex Grady who returns after a long time absence, due to injury, to fight again on big competition. Roberts was solid in his performance, he always had that tough guy/martial arts image on his face, but he was funny on some occasions. Standing next to him as another leading man… Phillip Rhee who plays Tommy Lee, a real life martial artist and expert in Taekwondo and Hapkido. Tommy Lee participates in the tournament only because of revenge of his brother, who died by the hand of Dae Han, the leading captain of Korean taekwondo team. Rhee is not that quite good in acting, but I think he tried hard in some important scenes, but his martial arts scenes were great. Now, we get to our supporting cast… Chris Penn… well, Chris was a great actor, really intense in his performances, and I was pretty confused by his appearance here, because I saw him before in "Reservoir Dogs" and "The Funeral". But, maybe he took the role because of his martial arts skills and… he was good as the tough, troublemaker, bully member of five best fighters. And than we have Sally Kirkland (wow, she was something back then), as a second trainer, that appears from nowhere to show a true spirit of Koreans and their taekwondo. And we also have such great actors as Louise Fletcher, a great actress… but her career was washed up, even back then and John P. Ryan as a manager of US team. Now, in the Korean fighting team we have two well-known fighters as Simon Rhee (brother of Phillip Rhee), who plays Dae Han, a very skilled Taekwondo master in real life, but not a great actor, and we have James Lew, who was known as a supporting opponent to many martial arts stars during 90s.OK, now… fighting scenes were good, the atmosphere during the fight was good, most of other things were solid… And, we have that "usual" effect of Korean team… they were presented as a real villains here. You know, because the US team is a leading team in the film… and of course, the Koreans look really evil here, they are really stone cold, crazy and scary, but that was to increase the drama… And we have that usual cliché of fighters who are fighting with themselves before they enter the tournament, you know, the good old, "you'll never win until you defeat your demons". Overall, it's a solid movie and I recommend it.

I don't know about USA but here in Bulgaria this movie was a cult 15 years ago. I mean it. It was not released legally here so we had to watch this and many other martial arts movies illegal on a VHS tape with a terrible video quality and many times dubbed in six or seven languages. It was pretty terrible but we saw many movies that way.But I did not see this movie on a VHS tape. I saw it on the TV about ten years ago. It was really terribly dubbed but I thought it was great. The fights were very good and the story was good enough to make an 11 years old boy happy.I saw it again a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed it but this time I didn't think it was that great. The fights were really good but the story was not that good. The acting was not good. Some people here say that it was good to hire actors instead of martial artists to play the roles but they are pretty wrong. Eric Roberts is an actor. But he has black belt in karate and that is why they hired him. Chris Penn had a black belt too. Not to mention Philip Rhee. But the characters were one-dimensional and not as developed as they had to be. The only really good actor here was James Earl Jones but his character was wrong somehow. I mean wrong. He was the trainer of the US karate team but he was FAT and completely out of shape. And he was not a martial artist. How could he train martial arts masters? He didn't show any martial arts experience or knowledge in the entire movie. Also the movie didn't need the character of Sally Kirkland. Really. May be she was supposed to represent the spirit of the martial arts or something like that but I think they put her in the movie just because there has to be a female character. But the big problem of the movie was... I don't know. I will call it americanism. It is obvious that the movie was made to make the Americans feel they are the greatest nation of the world. When you see a Korean guy yelling "USA! USA!" you will get what I mean. We could even see the Americans in the bar watching a martial arts tournament. That is not normal and you know it. They watch football or basketball or even boxing. But not karate. And what we saw was not a world karate championship. The only competition that actually happened was between the American and the Korean team. Why was this called "world championship"? But despite all I said this is a very good martial arts movie. It was much better than "Bloodsport" or "Karate Kid". At least it looks much more real.

Derek Roberts. truly the most underrated actor of our generation. now that i have stated what many of you already know...onto the film: this is the movie that truly has it all , tears , laughter , pain and tragedy . john pearl johns was never more believable than in his role as grizzled Vietnam veteran coach bullseye and Chris glen was also amazing as the retarded , fat guy come good . right from the start, this film tackles a controversial subject as Bruce lee has defected onto the American side, and proves himself a force to be tackled with. the films climatic showdown where the entire American team gang up on the last remaining Chinaman in Moscow has to be seen to be believed and all Can say is that this has to be the greatest Martial arts films of all time. as an experienced karate man i can say hand on heart that all the action scenes are as realistic as you are every likely to see on film. it of course can never truly capture the feel of fighting for your life as i have experienced many times, the tension of knowing one wrong move could be your last, the blood, the sweat and utter discipline that is demanded or the strange mixture of fury and sorrow as you see the life of another fade from this world but it comes quite close. all in all, a masterpiece